


ours are the moments I play in the dark / wild and fluorescent / come home to my heart

by anbethmarie



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Don't Examine This Too Closely, F/M, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I'm sorry people, Loss of Control, Loss of Innocence, Recovery, Reunion, What Have I Done, and, and of course she is pregnant, and then he goes away to the war omg, because this is completely implausible, but anne and gil have sex, there isn't actual smut in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-27 11:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15684417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anbethmarie/pseuds/anbethmarie
Summary: Avonlea, August 1914 – England declares war on Germany. Anne Shirley shows up rain-drenched on Gilbert Blythe’s doorstep and learns her fiancé is due to leave for the Western front in a week’s time.All Anne wanted was to have the memory of a few quiet moments alone with Gilbert. The fact that she would get wet through on the way to his house and have to wear his shirt while waiting for her clothes to dry did not enter into her calculations.





	1. you used to be blue / used to be cool / and chill / and cold / now I see you in gold

Avonlea, August 1914

 

‘My mother and Marilla are going to kill us if they ever get to learn of this, Anne.’

Anne Shirley gave her best friend a rueful smile. ‘They won’t, Diana. And—‘ Anne shot a quick glance at Diana’s right hand which, adorned with a golden wedding ring, was reposing on her slightly rounded belly. ‘And you yourself will have so much to remember and to treasure when Jerry goes away to fight. You are his wife, and you’re carrying his child. And all I want is to have the memory of a few quiet moments alone with Gilbert.’

Diana’s eyes filled with tears, and she threw her arms around Anne’s neck. ‘You promise not to do anything you might regret, Anne? If you got yourself into... into trouble, I’d never stop blaming myself for having been your accomplice.’

The solemnity of Diana’s words made Anne let out a short, somewhat strained laugh. ‘I promise. Gilbert would never let that happen, anyway. He’s way too self-controlled around me,’ she added with an attempt at a rakish grin. 

‘It’s a pity you two aren’t married.’ 

‘Yes,’ said Anne quietly, turning away so that Diana shouldn’t see her face. ‘It’s a pity.’

***

‘Marilla, I’m going to go stay at Diana’s tonight,’ said Anne after dinner, looking her adopted mother straight in the eyes. ‘Jerry has to stay over in Charlottetown until tomorrow, and so we’ve decided to have a girls’ night of it.’

‘Is Gilbert also not coming back until tomorrow?’ asked Marilla in a would-be natural tone.

‘No. I mean he isn’t. Jerry wired Diana there is some paperwork to deal with which they haven’t had the time to attend to yet, and that they’d both have to stay put one more day.’

‘A disgrace, taking away from the boys the time they should be allowed to spend with their loved ones,’ said Marilla sharply.

Anne didn’t respond. There was the low grumble of thunder somewhere in the distance. 

‘Remember to behave, Anne,’ said Marilla, looking at the girl, who was occupied in putting on her hat, with an expression intended to be stern. ‘Remember you’re twenty-one already, and Diana’s a married woman now.’

Anne paused with her hand on the doorknob. ‘We will, Marilla. See you tomorrow.’ She gave Marilla a reassuring smile over her shoulder and stepped out into the sweltering August afternoon. She was already well beyond the gate when the first few raindrops struck her. She hastened her steps, thinking it would be wasting precious time to go back for an umbrella.

***

‘Anne?’ Gilbert stared at the rain-drenched figure on his doorstep. Behind her, the thunderstorm was raging on with full force now. ‘Come in, quick,’ he moved a little to the side to let her in.

Anne stood shivering in the dimly-lit hall, watching him bolt the door. He turned around to face her, his expression concerned and bewildered.

‘Is something wrong? Something to do with miss Cuthbert?’ His dark eyes scanned her glistening face. ‘I was going to come over and see you before the dark yet, but I only got home an hour ago, and I had to take a bath and—’

‘It’s all right, Gilbert,’ Anne replied, her voice very quiet. ‘ Everyone’s all right. I’ve come because I knew Bash and Mary would be away for the night. And I need to talk to you. Alone.’

Gilbert’s eyebrows shot up. Then Anne trembled again, and his gaze flitted back to her dripping clothes. 

‘First of all, you need to change before you catch your death,’ he said, walking past her and opening a door to the right of the hall. ‘Come in here,’ Gilbert looked over his shoulder at where Anne stood, and she obeyed. He handed her a white linen shirt and a woollen sweater – both patently his own. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to make do with this,’ he said with a slightly embarrassed note in his voice. ‘I’d give you something of Mary’s, but she took all her spare clothes to Charlottetown to have them washed and mended.’

‘It’s—it’s all right.’ The cold, clammy clothes were fairly making her teeth chatter.

‘I’ll go make a fire in the living-room, so that you can warm yourself,’ Gilbert gave her a warm, reassuring smile and went out, closing the door behind himself.

Anne took off her wet boots and stockings, then her blouse and skirt. She hesitated a little over her corset; however, it was drenched as well, and she decided it would make no sense to leave it on. Then she took up the shirt Gilbert had given her. It was a clean one, but somehow it was pervaded with the smell of his skin all the same. When she put it on, it reached fairly to her knees. She rolled up the sleeves and threw the sweater over her shoulders, buttoning it all the way up so as to preserve some semblance of decency.  
She collected her drenched raiment and went, bare-footed, out of the room and into the dim hall. 

‘In here, Anne,’ Gilbert’s voice called from beyond an open door further on along the hall. She stepped into the living room, where a cheerful fire was burning on the hearth.

Gilbert turned around to face her, and the warm smile he had been wearing died a little on his lips. There she was, the white fabric of his shirt peeking out from beneath the sweater that seemed to engulf her, so huge did it look on her slender frame. The pale skin of her knees and calves seemed marble-white in the glow of the flames. 

Anne sent him a wan smile and came over to where he stood by the fire. She pulled a chair up to it and hung her wet clothes over its back and arms. Then she propped her corset against one of its legs.

‘This looks terrible,’ chuckled Gilbert, pointing to that monstrous piece of underwear. 

‘It is terrible,’ snorted Anne. ‘It’s like there something’s crushing your lungs whenever you try to breathe in a little deeper. When you take it off at the end of the day, the feeling is positively divine.’ She stretched out her arms with relief, the warmth of the fire making her feel much less vulnerable than she did when she stood on his doorstep, drenched to the skin. 

Somehow, despite – or perhaps thanks to – the utter impropriety of their discussing, of all things, a corset, the atmosphere was momentarily lightened. Anne looked up at Gilbert with a smile, which he returned, and then she finally did what she had been longing so very much to do ever since she saw him open the door for her dripping self. She took a step closer and, winding her arms around his neck, kissed him deeply on his deliciously warm mouth. 

Gilbert’s hands flew up to her back and it was only then, when he pressed her close to his chest, that he realised what an enormous difference a corset – or rather the lack of one – really made to the way a girl’s – Anne’s – body felt. The Anne he had embraced so many times before had an elaborate structure of whalebone and stiff, multilayered fabric separating her from him; the Anne he had in his arms right now was so fragile and soft to his touch that he felt as though he had never really known what it meant to hold her until now. 

Anne drew away from his lips and looked him in the eyes, her face drawn into an unconvincing mask of composure. 

‘When are you due to leave?’ she asked in a voice that was barely even a whisper. 

Gilbert jaw tensed. He brought a hand up to cup Anne’s cheek, his other arm still encircling her waist.

‘In a week from tomorrow,’ he said, and Anne drew in a sharp, shaky breath, shutting her eyes. Then she bit her lip and looked back up at Gilbert. He offered her a half-hearted smile; his eyes were two wells of unfathomed blackness.

‘Then we’ll start worrying about that tomorrow, Gil,’ she said, covering the hand that rested on her cheek with her own. ‘Today, we’ll just be together.’

He bent down and caught her lips in a sweet, lingering kiss. His hand went up to her hair, and he mumbled against her cheek, ‘Your hair is dripping, Carrots. At least let it down, it’ll dry quicker. I don’t want you coming down with a cold tomorrow morning. And I’ll go make you some tea.’

Anne smiled through the tears gathering at the back of her throat and disentangled herself from Gilbert’s embrace. He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead and went out of the room. She settled down on a sofa that was drawn up close to the fireplace, and began undoing her long braid. When Gilbert came back into the room, she was sitting combing her fingers though the wet strands of her hair, her bare feet stretched out towards the leaping flames. Anne felt his eyes on her back, but she neither moved nor looked away from the fire.

‘You do look comfortable, love,’ Gilbert’s voice reached her through the semi-darkness of the room, and there was a deeper note mixed with the amusement of his tone.

Anne felt a shiver run down her spine despite the fact that she was, in fact, almost too warm in the oversized sweater Gilbert had made her wear. She let none of this on, however; she simply looked at Gilbert with raised eyebrows and remarked in a would-be offended voice,

‘My corset will be dry enough to put back on soon, and then the comfort you seem to begrudge so much will come to an end once and for all, thank you very much.’ 

‘I don’t like the corset,’ Gilbert was a step closer now. ‘I never actually realised how much I don’t like it until now.’ Two steps. ‘And I don’t begrudge you anything, Anne, I just wish you’d make room for me on this sofa you seem to enjoy so much so that we could be comfortable on it together.’ By now, he was right behind Anne, his breath tickling the skin on the back of her neck as he bent down to whisper the last sentence into her ear.

‘Gilbert,’ Anne gasped, turning around and kneeling up on the sofa so that her face was on a level with his. He kissed her hard, but kept his arms pressed to his sides, a little afraid of what might happen – what his stupid brain might make him do – if he embraced her again and felt, through the clothes he had lent her, the nakedness of her body.

Gilbert drew away a little, nudging his nose against Anne’s. She pressed a butterfly kiss to the corner of his mouth and sat back on her heels, tugging at his sleeve.

‘You’ve wanted to try the sofa, remember,’ she giggled, and he dropped down next to her. She snuggled up close to him, her legs tucked up, and Gilbert, telling himself he had no other choice, put his arm around her waist. It was amazing, he thought, the way he could feel every curve of her body right beneath his fingers like this. 

‘Anne,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I love you so much. I—‘ he stopped, weighing his words carefully, unwilling to open up that subject again, but knowing some things had to be said. ‘Anne, I swear to you I will do my best to come back to you.’

‘And I’ll be waiting on the train station, and we’ll go straight to the church from there, and get married, and then we’ll never be apart for one moment more,’ she added, looking up at him with eyes that were two limpid pools of gray. She reached a hand up to his face and stroked his cheek. ‘Not one moment. I’ll follow you around everywhere until you get so sick of my company you’ll decide to run away to sea again.’ Anne strove to keep her voice light-hearted, but her throat was tight with suppressed tears.

‘Never,’ Gilbert tightened his hold on her waist. ‘Never again, Anne. Only this once more– and you know I have to go this once more, don’t you, love?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was a mere breath.

‘You are two very dear, brave girls, you and Diana,’ mused Gilbert, stroking Anne’s silky hair. ‘You are worth your weight in gold, both of you.’

‘Diana’s a hero, really,’ sighed Anne, drawing little shapes on Gilbert’s chest with her finger. ‘She’s so— so poised. But then, she’s always been like that. And I’ve always been a hysteric.’ 

‘No, Anne, you haven’t,’ said Gilbert decisively, tilting up her chin to make her look him in the eyes. ‘And you aren’t going to begin being one now. You have to promise me you’ll take good care of yourself when I’m gone. So that when I think about you I’ll always know all is well with you. Do you promise?’ 

‘And how will I know anything at all is well with you?’ she asked, her voice strained. ‘I’m sorry, Gil, but I— It seems to me I won’t be able to bear it. I simply won’t.’

‘Of course you will, darling,’ Gilbert said, striving to keep his voice steady. He tucked a stray lock of hair behind Anne’s ear, brushing her cheek with his knuckles. ‘You’re the bravest girl in the world. You’ve had to bear far more terrible things when you were a mere child. You’re stronger than you think.’

‘No, Gil. That was different. I may be strong when it comes to my own suffering, but not when—when,’ she took a deep, shaky breath. ‘Not when I have to fear for you—for your safety—for your life, perhaps...’ The tears Anne had been holding back for so long finally spilled over and down her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t go on living without you, Gil – I simply couldn’t. You’re my everything.’

Gilbert put both arms around her and held her tightly to his chest. She listened to the steady beating of his heart, thinking it was her favourite sound in the world. 

‘Anne, I swear to you I’ll come back. Have I ever promised you something and then not kept my word? You know I haven’t. And I certainly don’t mean to begin now.’ 

Anne didn’t respond. There was no good response, and there was no point in discussing the subject any further right now either. It would only cause them both to suffer more – and Anne’s great wish was that this one evening, which she had schemed and lied for them to have together, could be a happy memory for them both to cherish and go back to when times were hard and there was an ocean – an endless, hateful expanse of cold blue water – between them.

***

Anne’s eyes snapped open about half an hour later, and her first thought was that she was so unbearably hot she might faint with it. Slowly, so as not to wake Gilbert, she slid out of his arms, and immediately proceeded to throw off the woollen sweater, sighing with relief as she did so. She was terribly thirsty, too, and she remembered Gilbert had said something about tea.

Two cups stood on the table in the middle of the room; Anne quaffed one of them, and then went on tiptoe over to the chair on which she had hung out her clothes to dry. She knelt down to check the state of the loathed corset, thinking vaguely that it might be as well to put back on at least that one piece of her own clothing, if nothing else, before Gilbert woke up. Suddenly, Anne felt the skin of her throat and chest where it was exposed by the haphazardly buttoned-up shirt tingle queerly. Intuitively, she knew what that meant. She raised her head slowly. Gilbert was awake and his eyes, glistening eerily in the low firelight, were fixed on her. Anne stood up, holding the corset to her breast, feeling, to all intents and purposes, naked – the white linen of the shirt barely reached to her knees – and extremely vulnerable under Gilbert’s inscrutable gaze.

Gilbert, on the other hand, had only one thought running through his head; or not even a thought really, rather it was an awareness, a realisation – the overwhelming, all-pervading realisation that Anne Shirley, the girl whom he had loved, it seemed to him, before he had ever met her, was standing in front of him dressed in nothing except his own shirt, underneath which, that much he knew already, her body was all soft curves and valleys, and her skin, the bare skin of her throat and her legs, was white silk tinted orange by the dim light of the dying embers. 

Here, now, he was alone with her in the complete privacy of his own empty house; in a week’s time, he would be sundered from her and transported to the other side of the Atlantic, perhaps never to-- although he could not, would not follow the thought to its logical conclusion, it prompted the words which left his mouth the moment he saw her make a slight movement in the direction of the door.

‘Don’t go yet, Anne,’ he said in a voice made raspy by his recent sleep. He didn't put his hand out to her – he was afraid to move. He just wanted to look at her, memorise her, standing there in the firelight like a pale, slender ghost – no, not a ghost; a flesh-and-blood woman, a woman whose body, under the thin sheet of white linen that enveloped it, was warm and soft and—

The corset fell from her fingers and struck the floor with a dull thud. Feeling like she was drawn to him by some magnetic force – and indeed his eyes were magnets, nothing but two burning, black magnets at the moment – Anne took one, two, three steps towards the sofa on which Gilbert sat watching her immovably, unblinkingly. When there was only the breadth of one more step separating her knees from his, she stopped, her eyes locked with his, her arms stiff by her sides as she fought off the urge to fold them across her chest, feeling as though Gilbert’s gaze positively scorched the white fabric that covered it.

‘I swear I won’t touch you, love,’ Gilbert whispered with reverence. ‘Please, don’t be afraid. I just want to—to memorise you like this. You are so, so—‘ he paused, for the word “beautiful” seemed to him to be devoid of meaning when applied to Anne as he saw her right now. ‘You’re everything—everything. I only ever want you. Remember that, Anne, when—when I’m gone.’

All the time Gilbert was speaking, there was something building up in Anne – building up deep within her, building up and getting stronger, some sensation that was neither pain nor pleasure really, a yearning to feel Gilbert’s body against hers. It intensified with every syllable he uttered, until she felt she could stand it no longer, and when that terrible, terrible word – gone – left his mouth, she knew there was a line she had been approaching since morning that day, since the moment she had talked Diana into conniving at this plan – this madness – there that line was, right in front of her now, and on the other side of it was Gilbert – and here, pressing in on her from all sides, was the crushing consciousness of how much time would have to elapse before they could be alone like this once more – never, never perhaps to come again in this life –-

Anne took that one last step which separated her from Gilbert, grabbed his hand, pulled him to his feet, and wound her arms around his neck, pressing herself flush against him. She ran her fingers through his mussed hair, looking up into his eyes. His body was stiff against her, all his muscles taut, she could tell, with the effort of holding back from her. 

‘Anne—‘ he whispered pleadingly, his eyes boring into hers. ‘Anne, you know how much I love you. You know how much I want to—to do what you think right now you want me to do. But, dearest, dearest Anne,’ he swallowed hard, clenching his jaw, shutting his eyes for a moment. ‘I’d never forgive myself if we did something you’d come to regret in time. Never.’

In answer, he felt Anne move, if that was possible, even closer to him – he could feel her breasts pressed against his chest, could feel them rise and fall rapidly with her erratic breathing – and then she pushed herself up on tiptoe and whispered into his ear, her breath making the short hair on the nape of his neck stand on end, 

‘Kiss me, Gil. Please. I want you to so much.’

In a flash, his lips were on hers, and as their breaths mingled his arms shot up her back, and he felt her tremble. He laid a trail of feather-like kisses down the silky skin of her cheek and lower on, until his mouth, hot and urgent, was on her exposed neck. 

‘Oh, Gil,’ Anne sighed, her nails grazing his scalp. ‘I love you so much.’ She brought his head back up and kissed him on the mouth. When her teeth delicately grazed his lower lip, Gilbert groaned low in his throat, and pushed her gently back onto the couch, hovering above her. She shifted beneath him, and the feeling of her bare thighs pressed against his knee as it was lodged between them was what made him realise the immediacy of his want and the inevitability of the way this would end if he didn’t put an end to it right away.

Feeling very much like he was tearing away living flesh, Gilbert drew his lips away from Anne’s and closed his eyes, breathing hard, trying to collect his thoughts. When he looked at her again and saw the almost palpable lust stirring in the gray eyes he adored so much it took all the willpower he could muster not to just tear that damned – or blessed, he hardly knew which – shirt away from her body and cover every inch of her skin with kisses.

‘Anne,’ he gasped in a voice so strained it was almost inaudible. ‘Anne, I’m sorry. This can’t go on. You’ve always said you trusted me to stop when I thought I ought to, and you must realise that right now, with you like this, I—‘ he swallowed hard again.

Anne put her hand up to his cheek, stroking it lightly. She felt like there was electricity running through her bones and her blood and her skin. She felt like there was nothing that mattered anymore, nothing save Gilbert’s hungry, glistening eyes and her own need for him to keep touching her. ‘Gil,’ she breathed, and felt him shudder above her. ‘Gil, I don’t want you to stop. I don’t want you to think you must control yourself. Just this one time. Please, Gil.’

Her words and the tone in which she uttered them – full of anticipation, of anxiousness, yes, but also of such genuine need – were too much even for someone who was as well-trained in controlling his impulses as Gilbert had occasion to become during the two years of his engagement to Anne. He made, however, one last, feeble effort.

‘Anne,’ he gasped, putting his hand on top of hers that was pressed to his own cheek. ‘Anne, I couldn’t bear it if I left you behind, all alone, with—with child. I would never forgive myself.’

‘We don't need to worry about that, Gil,’ Anne whispered, willing herself to believe her own words so that she might sound convincing to him. ‘It would be next to impossible today – at this point in my—my cycle – to get pregnant. You’re a future doctor, you know what I’m talking about. Gil, please,’ as if of their own volition, Anne’s thighs closed the slightest bit tighter around Gilbert’s knee. Her voice was practically a whimper now, but she just hadn’t it in her to be ashamed of that fact when he was looking at her with eyes that were two black flames of pure desire. ‘Please, Gil. I want you so, so much— Please, I don’t want to wait anymore— I want you now—‘

That was it. Gilbert’s lips crushed into Anne’s. ‘Oh, Anne-- lovely, lovely Anne,’ he panted against the cool skin of her cheek. ‘I want you so much. I—‘ His hands strayed to the topmost button of her shirt. They were shaking, his whole body was shaking now. ‘Anne, please tell me you’re sure. I have to know you’re sure.’

‘Yes, Gilbert,’ she breathed, pressing her lips to his throat. ‘Yes, darling. Don’t think about anything else. Only about me. About us. Only tonight. Make love to me.’

She didn’t have to tell him that twice.


	2. my eyes are see-through / and your name is stuck in my breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THE WAR INTERLUDE is what I call this chapter (it's the penultimate one)
> 
> basically, it takes us through the war years and to 1919, so that the long lost lovers may reunite quick :D
> 
> I realise Gilbert's fate during the war is a complete improbability, but it happens in my alternative version of WWI, so there
> 
> ps. Willis is Anne's mother's maiden name

i. Charlottetown, November 1914

‘I’m pregnant, aunt Josephine. I need you to help me leave Avonlea, preferably for some big city where there’ll be little probability of my running into someone I know. I promise I’ll try my best to repay you whatever sum you can manage to lend me. I would never come begging for money in any other kind of situation, but this—‘

‘My dear, poor girl,’ Josephine Barry put a reassuring arm around Anne’s taut shoulders. ‘It’s the Blythe boy’s child, isn’t it? And he's—‘

‘He’s been reported missing,’ Anne’s voice was dull. ‘Presumed dead. The state I’m in will soon become visible, and I can’t stay in Avonlea and let people talk badly about him— us— about—‘ she raised her eyes, larger than ever in her emaciated, white face, to aunt Josephine’s kindly ones.

‘Of course I’ll help you, child,’ said the old lady, pressing Anne’s cold hands reassuringly. ‘You’ll see it’ll be all right. He’ll come back to you. God is not cruel enough to separate two young people who love each other as much as you and he.’

***

Money works miracles, and a few days later all was arranged. Anne left for New York, ostensibly in order to take up an extremely well-paid job in a girls' school. 

She told Mrs Lynde (thus ensuring quick dissemination of the news) that Avonlea depressed her, that everything reminded her of Gilbert, that she needed to get away. 

Neither Diana nor anyone else in Avonlea – except, naturally, Marilla – was told the real reason for Anne’s disappearance or given her new address.

 

ii. New York City, April 1915

‘It’s a boy, dearie,’ said the kindly, plump midwife, beaming down upon Anne. ‘A beautiful, strong little baby boy. Strong like his brave mommy. You’ve been very brave, dearie. Now try to rest a bit, and I’ll go clean up the little gentleman here before I give him back to you to hold.’

A boy! Anne turned her tear-stained face a little to the side on the sweat-drenched hospital pillow.

‘You have a son, Gilbert,’ she whispered, her eyes tightly shut. ‘We have a son.’

***

‘Have you decided yet what name you wish to give your son, Mrs. Willis? Because if so, we could have his birth certificate filled in before you leave hospital, so that you won’t need to bother about it later on,’ said the pleasant young intern whose daily task it was to check up on Anne in the evenings.

‘Yes,’ said Anne, looking towards where her son, his head covered in dark curls, lay peacefully asleep in a cot by her bed. ‘Yes, I have. His name is Walter Gilbert Willis.’

 

iv. Charlottetown, autumn 1915

Josephine Barry died peacefully in her sleep one night, leaving the bulk of her money to Anne Willis.

 

v. New York City, summer 1916

‘Mom-my,’ lisped little Walter, looking up at Anne with his big, dark-brown eyes. 

He wasn’t very much like Gilbert in overall appearance – he wasn’t much like either of parents really – but he had his father’s eyes. Those were Gilbert’s eyes that looked at Anne as she played with and fed and sang lullabies to her little baby boy. 

At first, she had feared they would suddenly turn light one day – she knew newborns’ eyes often changed colour completely. But Gilbert’s son had retained his father’s dark, earnest irises, and every day Anne said a little prayer of thankfulness for that fact.

 

v. Avonlea, June 1917

One particularly hot day at the beginning of summer, Marilla’s wearied heart finally gave out. 

On her deathbed, she told Diana where to find the slip of paper on which she had scribbled Anne’s address in New York. 

But when Diana and Mrs Lynde went through Marilla’s things after the funeral, the slip wasn’t there.

 

vi. Avonlea, December 1918

Diana Baynard stared at the letter she held in her hand in utter amazement. It was from Gilbert. Gilbert Blythe, who for the past four years had been believed dead by everyone in Avonlea. 

He wrote he could get no reply from Anne, even though he had been able to send letters to her since the beginning of October. He begged Diana for news of Anne and, if possible, for help in getting into touch with her. He explained he had been kept prisoner in a German training camp throughout the war – had been treated fairly well, had worked there as a doctor tending to the wounded – hadn’t been in direct danger to speak of – had been kept, however, under the closest surveillance, not allowed to send any letters, and had never exchanged a word with a person of origins other than German.

Diana wrote back all she knew: Anne left Avonlea in the autumn of 1914, shortly after Gilbert had been reported missing, and went to live in New York – and the only two people in the world who had known her present address had died without sharing it with anyone else. 

 

vii. New York City, March 1919

‘Wally is growing into such a handsome little gentleman, Anne,’ said Mrs. Greta Buckley, a good-tempered, middle-aged lady, the daughter of one of Aunt Josephine’s old friends. Anne had remained under her patronage almost since the day she first set foot in the States. ‘He isn’t at all like you, though.’

‘No,’ smiled Anne (with her mouth only, never with her eyes). ‘He’s a bit like—like his father. But not much, either.’

Mrs. Buckley gave Anne a sympathetic, warm smile. Incredible how that pale little Mrs. Willis seemed to pine after her lost husband just the same now as on the day Greta first saw her – almost four months’ pregnant, but so skinny and harrowed with misery it had seemed impossible either she or the child she carried would make it. And yet, they had made it – wonderful, the power of delusion! For the poor girl was delusional – she refused to accept the fact that the man she loved must long ago have been buried in a nameless grave in the European soil.

***

‘We’ll have a special guest coming over tomorrow for dinner, my dear,’ said Mr. Buckley to his wife. ‘The son of one of my old friends form Alberta. A young solider – or a doctor, rather, for he spent the whole war in German captivity, working as a doctor.’

‘A German doctor? What queer people you do bring over, Ralph!’

‘No, Greta, not German. The idea! The boy is a Canadian, only he was captured practically the day his regiment landed in Europe, and he’s been kept prisoner by the Germans throughout the war. Right now he’s rushing around the place, wild with worry about a girl whom he had left behind. I thought maybe you could help him to some information. You know about everyone’s comings and goings, after all.’

‘A girl, you say? A wife perhaps?’

‘No, I think he said a fiancée. In fact, I'm certain he did. A fiancée, he said, not a wife.’

‘Not our poor Mrs. Willis, then! A pity. Perhaps I'd better try to get her out of the house for tomorrow afternoon. Seeing a young man who isn’t her husband returned safely from overseas might upset the poor dear. Yes, I think I’ll do just that. I’ll send her out of the house, and never breathe a word to her about the visit. Neither will you, Ralph.’

‘Whatever you think best, dear,’ replied Ralph Buckley, who, whenever possible, acceded to his wife’s decisions. It saved him a world of trouble, and he disliked trouble more than anything. Besides, he respected and sympathised with the quiet, pale Mrs. Willis very much, and had no wish to cause her unnecessary suffering.


	3. I've been waiting by the lights for you / since the night you said you'd be home soon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> welcome to the chapter in which Anne&Gil reunite with three people, one of whom is their son, looking on
> 
> in short, you've been warned this is cheap melodrama :D
> 
> ps. SEASON 3 is official!!!! Gotta write a celebratory fic, something more worthy of the occasion than what you'll find down here...

About eleven o’clock next morning, Gilbert Blythe was walking down one of the broader alleys of Central Park, his hands deep in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the pavement. 

He was following out two somewhat contradictory lines of thought: one, that if Anne really was in New York he might, with any luck, meet her round the next corner; the other, that Anne had lived for over four years believing him dead, and then how could he be sure she was still here? How could he know she hadn’t moved to the other side of the country? Or that she wasn’t dead herself? Or—

‘Stop it’, he told himself firmly. ‘You’ve come back to her, and you’ll find her if it takes you another four years to do it.’ 

After all, he had already made a start – he had been lucky enough to run into that Buckley man, who had said that his wife, being a veritable busybody, might possibly be able to help Gilbert locate the girl he was searching for. ‘Why, of course,’ the old man had said. ‘There are young women waiting around for their lost sweethearts all over the place.’ One of them, he had said, was actually staying under his own roof at the very moment – an extremely nice, though terribly quiet creature of about twenty-five, whose husband had been reported missing shortly after the outset of the war. She had a boy of four, and her name was Anne Willis.

Gilbert sighed. Anne Willis, the widowed mother of a four-year-old boy, could not possibly be his Anne. He had always loved the sweet simplicity of the name, but now he found himself wishing it was less popular; he supposed every other person in New York knew an Anne whose fiancé or husband had gone to the war.

Suddenly, something small collided full tilt with Gilbert’s legs and, with a surprised yelp, tumbled down onto the pavement in front of him. It was a dark-haired, well-dressed boy of about four. The palm of his left hand had been scraped in the fall and now, in the wake of the disaster, he was sitting all huddled-up at Gilbert’s feet, looking down at the slightly bloody wound and emitting pitiful, quiet sobs.

‘Hullo there,’ said Gilbert in what he hoped was a friendly tone, crouching down and trying to peer into the boy’s face. The latter looked up, frowning unhappily, and Gilbert was momentarily taken aback by the oddest feeling of having seen that face before – or rather, not the face itself but its separate constituents: the earnest dark eyes, the pale skin, the indignant pucker of the lips. 

Gilbert shook himself up mentally and proceeded to try to restore the unfortunate child to a more equable state of mind.

‘Let’s see what we’ve got there,’ he went on a bit awkwardly, taking a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and reaching a hand out to the boy, who had stopped sobbing now and was regarding him in grave, wary silence. ‘You can trust me, I’m a doctor.’ 

‘My daddy’s a doctor too,’ replied the boy, still immovable.

‘Is he? Then you must know doctors can be trusted to take care of battle wounds such as this one.’

‘No, I don’t know. My daddy isn’t here. He went to fight in the war. I only know because mommy told me.’

Well. In all probability, thought Gilbert bitterly, every other child’s daddy had gone to the war never to come back. He decided to try another tack.

‘What’s your name? Mine’s Gilbert.’

‘Walter.’

‘Well, Walter, now that we have made friends with each other, let us see what we’ve got there, shall we? And then I’ll walk you back to your mommy. Is she somewhere around here?’

Walter shook his dark-haired head silently, looking on with evident interest as Gilbert took his injured palm, delicately cleaned away the grit that had stuck to the wound, and then proceeded to use the handkerchief as a makeshift band-aid. 

‘There you are. You’ve been very brave.’ He grinned encouragingly at the boy, and was glad to receive a small, somewhat mischievous smile in return. This new expression brought an unexpected change to Walter’s heretofore unnaturally solemn face, and again Gilbert was pervaded by that strange feeling of familiarity. 

‘Let’s get you back to your mommy. Where is she?’

‘I’m here with Lizzie. She’s our maid.’

‘Well, where’s Lizzie then? You’ll be my guide, okay?’

Walter nodded, and Gilbert felt a small, warm paw slide into his own hand as the boy led him onwards. When they had found the maid – who was nearly beside herself with worry at the boy’s disappearance – Gilbert was strangely sorry to feel his small companion’s hand slip out of his grasp.

‘Be a good boy, Walter,’ he said, waving goodbye as the maid led the boy away. ‘Take good care of your mommy.’

Gilbert had no idea why he had said that – only, there was something extremely pathetic in the picture of little Walter’s mother talking to her son about the father who had been a doctor and was gone away to a war from which he would, in all probability, never return.

***

‘What’s happened to your hand, Walter?’ asked Anne, looking at the improvised dressing with raised eyebrows. 

‘I ran into doctor Gilbert.’

Anne froze. ‘What was that you said, darling?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.

‘Doctor Gilbert. A big, sad man in the park. I scratched my hand. He said he is a doctor and his name is Gilbert. He put this on,’ Walter pointed to the handkerchief, ‘and he told me to be good and take care of you.’

‘Of me?’ Anne stammered. She looked into her son’s earnest eyes. The boy nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said gravely. ‘He said, ‘take good care of your mommy.’

‘So he... he didn’t know my name? Did you tell him what my name was, Wally?’

‘No. He just said, ‘your mommy’. Why, mommy? Why are you sad?’

‘I’m not sad,’ Anne smiled and leaned down to kiss the top of Walter’s dark, curly head. ‘I am never sad when I have my little boy with me. Now run along and fetch your boots and coat. We’ve promised Mrs. Buckley to go visit aunt Eliza, remember? We have to get going.’

As she watched her son shuffle unwillingly out of the room, Anne upbraided herself mentally for letting foolish ideas run away with her so easily. There were thousands of Gilberts walking the streets of New York right now, and it was only logical some of them must be doctors. To think for a second that the particular Gilbert Walter had met in the park could possibly have been Gilbert Blythe was sheer madness. 

***

The dinner at the Buckleys’ was drawing to a close. Having explained about Anne’s name, education, interests and possible places of employment, and having elicited from Mrs. Buckley an eager promise of doing her best to ‘reunite the cruelly sundered lovers’, Gilbert got up to go. It had been a long day – the past four and a half years had consisted entirely of long, wearisome days – and right now he felt like this dinner had been a mistake, an unpardonable waste of time.

On his way out, Gilbert passed the enormous fireplace in the centre of the room. His gaze glided over it almost unseeingly; suddenly, one of the pictures adorning its mantelpiece caught his eye and made him draw in a sharp breath.

‘Who—who is this, Mrs. Buckley?’ he asked the lady of the house (who had insisted on showing him out while her husband remained smoking at the table) in a tone of genuine surprise. 

‘Ooh, this one here is our little Wally. I mean, not ours, but Anne’s; that is, Mrs. Willis’s. Why, you do look taken aback, dearie. What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing really,’ Gilbert replied with a strained smile. ‘It’s just a rather amazing coincidence. I met this little gentleman here only this morning in the park.’

‘Really! He’s a little darling, isn’t he? He always makes me laugh when he says something in that solemn way of his. His mother loves him more than life itself, poor darling. And no wonder! Little Wally’s all she’s got left, and it’s a blessing too – when she first arrived here, mere weeks after her husband had been reported missing, she looked so wasted I was sure she wouldn’t make it. But somehow she had managed to pull herself together, and after Wally was born she got better every day. She’s still cut up about the boy’s father something terrible, though. And Josephine Barry always said she used to be the most radiant creature back when she—‘

‘Josephine Barry?’ asked Gilbert sharply, his voice sounding to his own ears as though it came from somewhere far away.

‘Yes, well, that’s how we came to know Anne – she was something of a protégée of miss Barry’s, and that good old lady and my mother used to be great friends some thirty or so years ago – you see, I was born on Prince Edward Island too, only—‘

‘Prince Edward Island? Is Anne— Mrs. Willis, is she from Canada? From Prince Edward Island?’

‘Yes, that’s what I— My dear boy, are you sure you’re all right? You do look rather pale.’

‘Mrs. Buckley,’ said Gilbert in the tone of a sleepwalker. ‘Can you tell me if Mrs. Willis's hair is red?’

‘As in, is she a redhead? Well, she’s more coppery-like, but—‘

‘And where is she now? Is she in this house?’ Gilbert was trying to tell himself not to get his hopes up, to convince himself that coming from Prince Edward Island and having red hair did nothing to erase the fact that the Anne they were talking about could not possibly be his Anne if her name was Willis and if she was the widowed mother of a four-year-old boy. Then he suddenly remembered the odd feeling of familiarity that took hold of him when he looked into little Walter’s solemn, pale face, and the way the boy’s puckered-up frown reminded him of something – wasn’t that just the way Anne used to frown when she was trying to act indignant? Good God, was it possible? It wasn’t – Anne had said it wasn’t – and yet, and yet—

He realised Mrs. Buckley was saying something. 

‘... and I wanted to spare her the pain of seeing you, because, although she’s so brave about it for Wally’s sake, it must be terribly hard for such a sensitive creature to—‘ 

‘Where are they? Can you give me the address? Where are they?’ Gilbert said wildly, conscious of the fact that he was acting like a lunatic, but unable to stand another moment of this terrible uncertainty. 

‘Really, I must put a stop to this,’ Mr. Buckley’s impatient, annoyed voice cut through the half-intelligible exchange between his wife and Gilbert. ‘First you send the girl out of the house on purpose, Greta, and now it seems this foolish boy here – really, for a doctor you seem to have terribly susceptible nerves, young man – is about to get a heart attack because he wants to meet her so much. Besides, Anne has just arrived a few moments ago. I saw the carriage through the window, as you would have, if you hadn’t been too busy acting like two maniacs. Why, she and Wally must be in the hall right now. Have you gone quite insane, Blythe?’ he asked huffily, seeing Gilbert rush out of the room on legs that seemed to shake like jelly.

‘Oh dear,’ said Greta Buckley, following close upon his heels. ‘I simply don’t understand it.’

***

Anne saw the lights blazing in the dining-room of the Buckleys’ house, and, wearied after the onerous visit, decided she would take Wally straight upstairs and then fetch both him and herself something to eat. They were already at the foot of the staircase when the sound of a door thrown open made the boy look back over his shoulder, and he said in a drowsy voice, tugging at Anne’s hand to make her stop,

‘Look, mommy. Doctor Gilbert has come to visit us.’

Anne froze, her breath caught in her lungs, and a buzzing sound invaded her ears. Slowly, the muscles of her entire body so tense she could hardly move, she turned around. 

There he was.

There he was. The eyes which Anne had thought she would never see again save in her – their! – son’s childish face looked at her from the face of the man who had promised her all those years ago that he would come back to her. And there he was.

‘Don’t be afraid, mommy. I know him. He is my friend. Tell mommy you are our friend, doctor Gilbert.’ 

There she was.

There she was, a tall, slender figure dressed in gray. The light of his life, the woman whose image, stamped indelibly under his eyelids, had rendered it possible for him to make it through years of imprisonment in a hostile country. There she was.

Feeling as though he was moving is slow motion, Gilbert took one, two, three steps in Anne’s direction. She stood rooted to the spot, paralysed; only, with every step he took, her eyes got a little bigger and her skin a little paler. 

When they were finally face to face, Anne, her face a drawn, bloodless, expressionless mask, raised her hand slowly, and Gilbert felt the touch of her cool fingers on his cheek.

‘Anne,’ he said in a choked voice, desperate to shake her out of this terrible immobility. ‘Anne.’

It was as though some dam within her broke when she heard him say her name. She let out a wracking, strangled sob, and Gilbert saw the facade of forced equanimity behind which she had been living for the past four years crumble in front of his eyes. 

In a flash, her arms where around his neck, clutching at him so spasmodically it seemed she would never be able to let go. Whispering her name like it was a prayer, he began covering her hair and face in haphazard, thirsty kisses. Each could feel the incontrollable pounding of the other’s heart, and to each it seemed like there could exist no pleasure more divine than being able to hold onto the other’s breathing, living, warm flesh and blood body forever. 

After a few seconds that might as well have been hours, Mrs. Buckley’s bewildered voice piped up. ‘What does it mean? I don’t understand; has there been a mistake?’

‘Hysterics, that’s what it means,’ replied her husband, trying to sound gruff, but finding, to his dismay, that a large lump had formed in his throat. ‘These young people really work themselves up into a state about the smallest trifle.’

‘Mommy!’ Walter, who had been tugging at Anne’s skirts and trying to get her attention for the past few moments, said in a slightly irritated tone. ‘Mommy, let doctor Gilbert go. I think he can’t breathe. And if he faints, we will have to call in doctor Wilson. And I don’t like him. He’s a stupid old man. Couldn’t doctor Gilbert be our doctor now? He would agree if you asked him to. And perhaps he would stop being so sad then. Will you ask him, mommy?’

Anne laughed through her tears, looking first into Gilbert’s sparkling dark-brown eyes, and then down into her – their! – son’s identical ones. It was like the long years of interminable waiting, misery and longing vanished into thin air. She was a girl of twenty again – full of hope, and the will to live, and dreams of a beautiful future.

‘I just did, Wally,’ she said, her voice filled with the purest joy. ‘And he said yes.’

***

‘Anne, you’ll never believe me,’ Gilbert’s voice was charged with suppressed emotion. They were sitting on the edge of the bed in which their son lay peacefully asleep, talking in rapt whispers. ‘You’ll never believe me, but I knew. When I saw Walter in the park this morning, I had the strangest feeling in the world that this was a face I knew, only it was somehow so different – the elements were all there, but the pattern was new. And then when I saw his picture and Mrs. Buckley told me you were from Canada I realised he has your mouth – he frowns and he smiles in exactly the same way you do. I realised he is your son – and mine. Our son. It was like a revelation.’

Anne smiled, looking at Gilbert with eyes which were still puffed-up and red with crying, but to him more beautiful and dear than ever before. ‘Our son,’ she whispered, putting her trembling hand into his. ‘Yours and mine, Gil. We are a family now.’

Gilbert smiled a dazed, half-disbelieving smile, pressing her hand reverently to his lips. Suddenly, his eyes went wide and he started up. Little Walter stirred in his sleep.

‘Hush, you idiot,’ laughed Anne quietly, standing up too. ‘You’ll need to learn how to behave around children.’ She took him by the hand and led him out of Walter’s room, closing the door softly behind them.

‘But Anne, I just realised we still have to get married!’ Gilbert’s face was a study in horrified bewilderment. ‘The Buckleys actually think we are married!’

‘Well, and what’s the harm in that? Greta already has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I’m not a war widow anymore; it would simply break her heart to learn I have never even been a war wife,’ Anne giggled, winding her arms around Gilbert’s neck. ‘After all, we can always be married tomorrow morning on the sly, if that suits you.’ She pressed a sweet kiss to his lips. He returned it with passion, wondering internally why they wasted more time than was absolutely necessary in talking instead of kissing.

To his regret, Anne pulled away, an impish smile playing on her lips. ‘We aren’t married, remember? No passionate displays of feeling in public.’ She turned in the direction of the stairs, tugging at Gilbert’s hand. ‘Come on, we have to ask the Buckleys’ permission for you to stay under this roof for the night, and then—’ she looked up at him with an expression of spurious innocence, ‘and then we’ll go straight to bed, because tomorrow first thing in the morning you have to rush to the nearest registrar to take out a marriage licence.’

Gilbert leaned down and pressed a quick, hard kiss to Anne’s smiling lips. ‘Straight to bed,’ he repeated with a look in his dark eyes that made her blush and tremble deliciously, the way she had almost despaired of doing ever again. ‘I like the sound of that.’


End file.
